Lepe

Sister cities

• Olecko

History

Although deposits of Neolithic and Bronze Age have been found, there is no evidence of stable settlements in the municipality of Lepe. During the initial period of Roman rule, Lepe there was a rustic villa. There were fish farms at the present location of Lepe, Valsequillo and El Terrón. The retreat of the coast caused the abandonment of the settlement of Valsequillo, while fishing by El Terrón has continued until today. It is during the heyday of Roman rule when it blooms Lepe settlement located in a small village, linked to farming their fields and fishing port of El Terron. Based on classical texts, several authors have identified the current location of Lepe settlements with Laipe Megala (Rodrigo Caro, 1634), Laepa (García y Bellido, 1947; G. Bonsor, JP and E. Garrido Orta, 1922) and Praesidium (Luzon, 1975). Of all these options is Laepa which has more support among historians, although as a small country villa rather than a village itself. It is after the second wave of Arab conquests when Lepe becomes the economic center of the area, growing from a small farmhouse to a "city about the Ocean Sea," as was described by the geographer Yaqut al-Hamawi later in the 1229. The name given during the period of Arab rule is Labb, which derives in the current name. Several of Lepe’s former inhabitants played an important part in Christopher Columbus’s discovery of the Americas, as the sailor Rodrigo de Triana was the first to sight the coast of the Americas. In the late 16th century, Marcos Alonso de la Garza left Lepe and settled in what is today the Mexican state of Durango, beginning a line of descendants, including Cpt. Blas María de la Garza Falcón, a conquistador of the state of Nuevo León.